ZEISS announces the newest member of their esteemed Batis family of lenses for Sony’s Alpha FE cameras, the ZEISS Batis 2/40 CF. The lens is an autofocus 40mm F2.0, with a quasi-macro mode ZEISS likes to call “Close Focus”. Keep reading to find out more.
Why 40mm?
The Batis family has been hugely popular among Sony Alpha shooters for quite some time now, with many models constantly backordered and in high demand. At this point the line ranges from an 18mm F2.8, 25mm F2.0 to an 85mm F1.8 and 135mm F2.8. Now ZEISS is trying to close the gap between the 25mm and the 85mm with the newly released ZEISS Batis 2/40 CF. While some might argue that 50mm is a standard lens and others consider 35mm the standard length, 40mm falls in between, hitting a sweet spot there. The focal length also makes sense considering the system it’s released for, as both the 35mm and 50mm focal distances are getting rather crowded on E-Mount, with two Sony/ZEISS lenses released in either.
What Can It Do?
Like all Batis lenses, which were in turn inspired by ZEISS’ Milvus line, the ZEISS Batis 2/40 CF features the curved, organic design the line has become known for. The is a rubber focus ring and an OLED display on top of the lens, indicating focus distance – not only the distance of the focal plane itself, but also the boundaries of the hyperfocal plane. The lenshood picks up and seamlessly continues the smooth rounded shape of the lens barrel.
The ZEISS Batis 2/40 CF is made of 9 elements in 8 groups, and closes down to F22 from its fully open position at F2.0. It has a 67mm filter thread and comes in at 361g / 0.8 lbs.
Setting it apart from all other Batis lenses, the ZEISS Batis 2/40 CF has a three-way switch on its barrel, implementing the “Close Focus” feature, with a minimum focusing distance of 24cm / 9.4 inch and a magnification factor of 1:3.3. The possible settings are “Full”, “∞ – 0.4m” and “0.5m to 0.24m” effectively working like most macro switches do. Of course the magnification wouldn’t make this a “real” macro, but more like a specialised closeup mode.
A Full Line of Batis lenses
Following the Loxia, the Batis line is now at a point where it can almost be considered a full prime lens lineup, covering most prime lens needs of Alpha shooters. The ZEISS Batis 2/40 CF is available now.
Are you excited about the ZEISS Batis 2/40 CF? Does it fill a need in your lens lineup and are you interested in the macro features? Let us know in the comments!

I reviewed Laowa’s 24mm f/14 Probe Lens which has used to be available on Kickstarter (now you can order it here) – we reported about it here. Let’s see what it can really do!
Viral Hit
Two years ago at Photokina I shot an interview with Kevin from Chinese lens manufacturer Venus Optics about the prototype of this lens under their brand “Laowa”.
The video got around 2.5 million views so far and for some reason it’s become the most popular video on our YouTube channel, unbelievable.
Now after two years it finally arrived for testing, and I had to take it for a spin around some bees – and our friends from MXR Productions loaned me their Phantom Miro camera to get some amazing slow motion footage.
Still from a clip shot on the Laowa 24mm f/14 Probe Lens
Lens Design Advantages
As you can see, the unusual lens design has a couple of advantages: You can get VERY close to your subject without disturbing it with a huge front element, and you don’t put yourself into much danger because you are still physically far away. And of course, the slim, long design allows you to go into narrow objects and get perspectives that would be otherwise impossible. Also, it’s 24mm wide, which is very unusual for a macro lens. This means you can see small animals as part of their environment rather than isolated when using a normal Macro lens which often has 100mm.
Laowa 24mm Macro Probe Lens on a Sony A7 III
Built-in LED Light and f/14 Aperture
What’s really cool is that the front tip of the lens is waterproof and also has an LED light built in.
When I was shooting the bees in slow motion at mostly 500 frames per second, I needed every bit of light that I could get – also because the lens has a minimum aperture of f/14, which is of course extremely slow and one of its biggest downsides.
I found the LED light which is powered through a USB micro port on the lens is particularly helpful as additional light when shooting in a bright environment already. If you use ONLY the LED light when filming in a dark environment, it makes everything look extremely flat because of the direction of the light, just like a headlight on a camera.
Filming with the Laowa Macro Probe Lens inside a bee hive, with the Phantom Miro super slow motion camera.
Optical Quality, Mount Versions
I did not to scientific tests on the optical quality of the lens but there is some color fringing that I can see – however I never expected a lens with such a complicated design to be perfect.
The Laowa 24mm f/14 Probe Lens is available in Canon EF, Nikon F, Sony FE and Arri PL mounts.
Their Kickstarter is about to run out later today, and this is your last chance to pre-order it … later it will be available through retail and we will post all the updated buy links into this video once they become available.
You can now order the lens directly from Laowa on their website by clicking here.
Conclusion
All in all a compelling, different kind of product that definitely is very useful for many specific use cases. I wouldn’t want to miss it in my tool kit anymore now that I know what is possible with it.
The music used in the video above is courtesy of Music Vine. Get 20% off with code C5D20 (valid until 31st March 2019)
Will you be getting a Laowa 24mm Macro Probe Lens? What would you shoot with it? Let us know in the comments below.

Venus Optics launched a new Kickstarter campaign on a somewhat old lens: The Laowa 24mm f/14 macro probe was announced back in 2016 at their Photokina booth. Now, almost two years later, that very lens is the headliner of a Kickstarter campaign. Let’ have a look at this thing and compare it to the 2016 prototype design as there are some significant differences to be found!
This “lens” is really something special. It’s a 24mm wide angle lens but at the same time it’s a 2x macro lens. I never encountered a lens with these two characteristics combined. And if you did, here’s yet another feature which proofes the uniqueness of the Laowa 24mm probe even further: It’s 40cm (15.75″) long!
Laowa 24mm f/14 Macro Probe Lens
When we stumbled over the very weird looking Laowa 24mm f/14 macro lens back in 2016, we simply had to cover it. The design was (and is) so unique you might end up asking yourself: What the hell is it? Well, it’s a macro lens but not an ordianry macro lens, obviously. It offers a focal lens of 24mm, so we’re looking at a wide angle lens here.
But this wide angle lens is a 2x macro lens at the same time and it comes in a very odd 40cm housing. That’s also the reason for its strange f/14 aperture, the front element is just too tiny and the lens itself is just too long for allowing a faster f-stop. Check out those videos for a rundown of all the things this lens is capable of:
This 2018 version of the Laowa 24mm f/14 lens differs slightly from the 2016 prototype version, though. There are some neat additions to the design: LED ringlight, updated overall design and a waterproof and dustproof front barrel.
Features and Specs
The Loawa 24mm macro probe lens definitely allows for some very unique shots but at f/14 you’ll need a lot of light, indeed. Therefore, Laowa decided to implement a LED ringlight right at the tip of the lens. With it you’ll be able to illuminate your subject even in the darkest spots. Dead frontal light isn’t the most pleasing way of lighting a scene, obviously, but at least you’ll be able to get some decent shots with this ringlight (micro USB powered, the port is on the lens barrel itself).
The most unique feature of this lens is certainly its massive length. It might be seen as a disadvantage (think of packing this lens into your bag..) but in reality this design opens the door for a whole new style of shooting: You can get macro shots of objects from a safe distance, you can perform a “push-in” between small objects too narrow for a camera to fit through. The relatively short focal length of 24mm is pretty unique, too. But since a shorter focal length results in a deeper depth of field, you can capture even more from the surrounding rather that end up with completely blurred background.
Laowa 24mm (left) vs. “regular” macro lens (right).
Another benefit of such a long lens barrel is the fact that you won’t end up casting shadows from the lens itself on your subject. And, lastly, the waterproof front barrel offers creative flexibility which doesn’t end on water surfaces.
Pricing and Availability
The Laowa 24mm is available for purchase backing. That means, you’ll hand over your money to Laowa and therefore support them making this lens a reality. While working prototypes exist already, mass production is different kind of thing. But since we’re talking about an established company with an experise in making high quality lenses, the risk should be manageable.
This is some pretty advanced lens design.
In 2016 Laowa claimed to be ready for market in 2017 but it took them a full year longer. The reason for that is the really complicated lens design. Although this lens might look a little bit like a toy it’s a pretty advanced piece of gear, really. It consists of 27 elements in 19 groups. That’s a lot! it weights 474g (16.72 oz) and you can choose between Canon EF, Nikon F or Sony FE mounts. Or, for an additional $200, you can get a PL mount version. If you choose the PL version, the focus and aperture rings will sport 0.8 pitch gears.
Early bird tiers start at $1,099 and if everything goes smoothly, first lenses will be shipped by December 2018. The final price after this Kickstarter campaign will be around $1,500.
Links: Kickstarter campaign | Venus Optics Website
Are you into macro shooting / photography? Might this strange looking lens might tickle your fancy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The Fotodiox DLX Stretch lens adapter adds ND filters, macro magnification and aperture control for manual lenses.
Fotodiox has been a popular choice for lens adapters, offering various options that aren’t as costly as those from Metabones. The newest addition to their line-up, the DLX Stretch series, is much more than just a bare-bones lens adapter. In addition to adapting your lens for use on a different camera body, it also introduces three extra features: a lens barrel extender to achieve macro magnification, manual aperture control for Nikon lenses and most interestingly, drop-in magnetic ND filters.
The macro magnification feature works by turning a dial on the lens barrel, causing it to extend. This pushes the lens away from the sensor, creating a macro effect with any lens. This is similar to how extension tubes work, but in this case it all happens internally in the adapter itself.
In the Nikon version of the lens adapter, a built-in aperture control has been added for Nikon lenses that have no manual control. If you are using Canon lens, It’s important to note here that Fotodiox recommends only using manual Canon EOS lenses, as there is no electronic control from the adapter to change aperture in camera.
Lastly and probably the adapter’s most intuitive feature, is the drop in magnetic ND filters. These are placed in the rear mount of the lens to stop down the exposure, ideal for achieving shallow depth of field in bright situations, or for Sony mirrorless camera users shooting in an S-Log profile which requires a higher ISO. The DLX Series includes ND4/8/16 in the package, but more ND filter stops will be coming soon. The filters sit snugly in the rear mount of the lens and need a nudge or shake to remove them.
The Fotodiox DLX Series adapters are available for a number of lens mounts and body mounts, which include:
Body mounts: Sony E Mount, Micro Four-Thirds, Fuji X Mount.
Lens mounts: Canon EF, Canon FD, Contax/Yashica, Leica R, Minolta MD, Nikon, Olympus Zuiko (OM) and Pentax K.
Price wise, at $129.95 the Fotodiox DLX Series adapters are certainly affordable in comparison to products from other manufacturers. However, due to the lack of electronic control, features such as autofocus or image stabilisation will be unavailable to you and you are mostly going to be limited to using manual lenses. You can see the Fotodiox DLX Stretch in action in the video below.
For the full range of adapters, check out the Fotodiox website.
Does the Fotodiox DLX Series adapters give you the extra features you need for shooting with a mirrorless camera? Let us know in the comments.

The new Macro adapter from Lindsey Optics aims to bring high-performance macro to some of the high-end cinema glass offerings in the market.
We met Dwight from Lindsey Optics at Cine Gear Expo 2017, and he showed us their new Macro Lens Attachment Series – macro adapters in +1, +2 and +3 strengths designed to work with the ZEISS Compact Zooms, Ultra Primes, Schneider Xenon and Xenar, Cooke 5i, with future plans to adapt to S4, Leica and more.
The series consists of the various adapters that work with each particular lens model, as well as a 3-element lens designed to very high standards. This high quality, for example, allows the ZEISS zoom to remain par focal with the Lindsey Optics adapter on, as you can see in the demonstration above.
The +1 strength lens sits at the top of the the set in terms of resolution, capable of resolving 200 line pairs per millimetre across a full-frame sensor, something that Dwight from Lindsey Optics says no one else is doing right now. The +2 and +3 fall slightly behind, with 130 and 100 line pairs per millimetre respectively. As a reference, the sensor on the ARRI Alexa can resolve 65 line pairs per millimetre.
As mentioned before, one of the biggest strengths of this macro adapter is to keep focus throughout the zoom range when using a zoom lens, so basically all you have to do is focus once and then change perspective as needed. Another nice effect when using this macro adapter is to gain “minimum focus distance”, meaning, the adapter will improve the minimum focus distance of every lens it is being used on.
So far, it seems the Lindsey Optics macro adapter will work just as well with primes as with zooms, as long as the diameter of the lens doesn’t go beyond the 90-110mm ball park, and the focal length stays approximately within the 35mm to 100mm range.
Each lens will sell for $2,100, with each individual adapter necessary to use it on the different compatible models coming in at $98. The system will be available from August. For more information, make sure to visit their website.
Has Macro shooting tickled your fancy yet? Let us know in the comments!

As Seth Emmons from Leica explains, the company has been hard at work not only developing cine lenses, but also other tools to add to your creative arsenal. The evidence of this are the Leica Cine Macrolux macro diopters. Read on for the full details.
Leica Cine Macrolux Macro Diopters
The new Leica Cine Macrolux macro diopters expand on the original 1X with additional powers of 2X and 0.5X, providing options of either more or less augmentation. With a 95mm front filter thread diameter, they fit all lenses in the Leica cine range, but also other lenses with this standard gauge, such as the ZEISS Ultraprimes or Master Anamorphics, without the need for any additional adapters.
But why would you want to throw one of these on your cine lens? The obvious answer is to achieve those extreme close ups often seen in tabletop-style shoots for product commercials.
The stackable nature of the Leica Cine Macrolux macro diopters also means that you can achieve that macro look on any focal length you want, rather than being limited to a single specific macro lens.
Organic focus fall off with Macrolux.
Another advantage is their use on wide-angle lenses to throw the background out of focus even when at narrower apertures — a use until now somewhat limited by the evident chromatic aberration that other diopters cause on wide-angle lenses.
Pricing and Availability
Each of the Leica Cine Macrolux macro diopters will set you back $1,900, making them the some of the most affordable cine optics to sport the Leica name-tag. This is due partly to the reduced amount of glass they’ve used, which is nevertheless of the highest quality and features the same coating used on their cine lenses. Leica goes as far as to claim that there will be no evident Chromatic Aberration, even when stacking more diopters than you would probably need in real-life use.
The Leica Cine Macrolux macro diopters are available now. For more information see cw-sonderoptic.com
Will you be expanding your creative palette with these Leica Cine Macrolux macro diopters? Let us know in the comments below!

The folks over at Edelkrone are well-known for surprising us with an ever-growing armada of innovative camera accessories. The freshly announced Motion Module for their SliderONE is no exeption. It brings motion control of the tiny slider right to your fingertips – with the help of an iOS device.
The Edelkrone Motion Module
When the SliderONE hit market about a year ago (read all about it here), it was by far the smallest slider to date, or at least the smallest one able to support some serious indie cameras of up to 20lbs (9kg) in weight. But Edelkrone didn’t stop innovating there. If you want to upgrade your existing SliderONE, there is now a new toy to play with in town: the Motion Module.
The Motion Module screws right under the SliderONE, making it a complete and seamless unit. The drive unit attaches to the SliderOne directly, so from the moment you connect it, the whole thing is controlled by the motor, which in turn is controlled by your iPhone via Bluetooth.
A single LP-E6 battery provides juice for the module for up to 20 hours of live video sliding or 96 hours in time-lapse mode. The unit doesn’t have a single button, screen or other user interface, which might seem like a downside, but in the end is what makes the Motion Module look and feel like one solid brick. The only I/O port on the unit is a camera trigger for the time-lapse and stop motion modes.
Now that your SliderOne is controlled through your iPhone (iOS only for now, with Android coming soon), let’s dive into the different modes.
Slide Mode and Macro Slide
In slide mode you can control diferent parameters such as duration (or speed) of the resulting move and the damping. In and out points can be set as well as idle phases at the beginning or end in which the slider won’t move. A move can be performed from A to B, vice versa or even as a loop.
The slider is capable of moving as slow as 10 μm/sec. That’s 1/100 of a millimeter per second! That should be enough for some serious macro work. Personally, I haven’t tested it, and since macro movements are always a bit tricky in terms of vibrations, I’m not sure if it will hold up to my expectations. But if this tiny Motion Module is really capable of doing a good job, that would be really facinating!
Time-Lapse and Stop Motion Mode
When you’re happy with the move you created, you can hit ‘Convert to Time-Lapse‘ at any time and the app will do the math. The resulting move will look exactly like the one you’ve just programmed, even if the time-lapse lasts for 2 days straight. With this it becomes really easy to achieve motion-controlled time lapses. The features are limited, of course, and there are more sophisticated tools out there, but I think this is a quick and very cool way to pull off decent results. Remember, the whole unit fits in your pocket… Well, almost.
status screen while performing a time-lapse
Same goes for ‘Convert to Stop Motion‘. The resulting move will be exactly the one that you’ve created: idle times, acceleration, distance, deceleration… it’s all there. The software only splits the move into frames so you can tweak the scene to your likings before moving to the next one.
Pricing and Availability
This unit promises to be a very versatile upgrade for the original SliderOne. I really hope that it meets expectations, because if it does and if it performs smoothly in all modes mentioned above, we are talking about a pretty mighty tool that almost fits in your pocket! The Edelkrone Motion Module for SliderOne will be available in a few weeks and will retail for € 339.99 ex VAT (about $370). After an introductory period that price will rise to € 359.99 ex VAT (about $390).
source: Edelkrone website

At Photokina, we stumbled across a very odd-looking lens, a quite unusual macro: the 24mm Relay Lens by Chinese brand Laowa (Venus Optics). These lenses are also known as snorkel lenses due to their unusual shape: a long tube with a tiny opening at the end. Let’s take a closer look.
With normal Macro lenses, one sometimes runs into the problem of having camera or lens shadows all over your subject, which is why I usually prefer using a 100mm Macro over a 50mm Macro. The wider the lens, the bigger this problem of course, as a wider field of view means a bigger chance of capturing unwanted shadows. Not only that, but it is also physically often very hard to get close enough to your subject with a normal sized macro lens.
The Laowa 24mm Macro Relay Lens / Snorkel Lens
In come these snorkel lenses, which are niche lenses with very special purposes. For example, dip it underwater without destroying your camera, or get that otherwise impossible shot inside an anthill or small cave.
When checking out the lens at the Laowa booth at Photokina, I tried it out at their setup of small plastic soldiers, and the images you can capture are really quite unique. Imagine this on a stabilized rig, doing fast-paced miniature “action cam” between the figures, and you could really achieve quite a unique-looking video. I tried it and you can see a short shot of me doing that in the video above.
At f/16, this is of course nothing that can be used under bad lighting. It’s only logical that it’s slow because of the tiny opening and the long tube. Nevertheless, there’s a very shallow depth of field because of the fact that it’s a macro.
The Laowa 24mm Macro Relay lens will be available in early 2017, with pricing yet to be determined. From their past offerings, we can expect the price to be quite competitive.
Thanks for Stefan Haselgruber for helping out with filming on this video.